Nuclear physicists and theorists have speculated that nuclear war could result in the end of modern civilization on Earth due to the immediate effects of nuclear fallout, the temporary loss of much modern technology due to electromagnetic pulses, or the hypothetical effects of a nuclear winter and its resulting extinctions.

Importantly however, despite modern high civilization being at risk, assuming weapons stockpiles at the previous Cold War heights, analysts and physicists have found that billions of humans would nevertheless survive a global thermonuclear war,[1][2][3][4] but there is much debate about how the planet's environment would be affected by it and its consequences for the surviving population.

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The English word "holocaust", derived from the Greek term "holokaustos" meaning "completely burnt", is commonly defined as "a great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire."[5]

Possibly the first printed use of the word "holocaust" to describe an imagined nuclear destruction appears in Reginald Glossop's 1926 novel The Orphan of Space: "Moscow ... beneath them ... a crash like a crack of Doom! The echoes of this Holocaust rumbled and rolled ... a distinct smell of sulphur ... atomic destruction."[6] In the novel, an atomic weapon is planted in the office of the Soviet dictator who, with German help and Chinese mercenaries, is preparing the takeover of Western Europe.

In the 1960s, the word principally referred to nuclear destruction.[7] After the mid-1970s, when the word "holocaust" became closely associated with the Nazi Holocaust,[7] references to nuclear destruction have usually spoken of "atomic holocaust" or "nuclear holocaust".[8]

In 1982 nuclear disarmament activist Jonathan Schell, published The Fate of the Earth which is regarded by many to be the first carefully argued presentation that concluded that extinction is a significant possibility from nuclear war, however the assumptions made in this book have been thoroughly analyzed and determined to be "quite dubious",[9] the impetus for Schell's work, according to physicist Brian Martin, is to argue that "if the thought of 500 million people dying in a nuclear war is not enough to stimulate action, then the thought of extinction will. Indeed, Schell explicitly advocates use of the fear of extinction as the basis for inspiring the "complete rearrangement of world politics".[9]

The belief in "overkill" is also commonly encountered, with an example being the following statement made by nuclear disarmament activist Philip Noel-Baker in 1971 - "Both the US and the Soviet Union now possess nuclear stockpiles large enough to exterminate mankind three or four - some say ten - times over", with Brian Martin suggesting that the origin of this belief is from "crude linear extrapolations", and when it is analyzed it has no basis in reality.[10] Similarly it is common to see stated that the combined explosive energy released in the entirety of World War II was about 3 megatons while a nuclear war with warhead stockpiles at Cold War highs, would release 6000 WWII's of explosive energy.[11] An estimate for the necessary amount of fallout to begin to have the potential of causing human extinction is regarded by physicist and disarmament activist Joseph Rotblat to be 10 to 100 times the megatonnage in nuclear arsenals as they stood in 1976, however with the world megatonnage decreasing since the Cold War ended this possibility remains hypothetical.[10]

According to the 1980 United Nations report General and Complete Disarmament: Comprehensive Study on Nuclear Weapons: Report of the Secretary-General, it was estimated that there were a total of about 40,000 nuclear warheads in existence at that time, with a potential combined explosive yield of approximately 13,000 megatons.

However it must be noted that comparisons with supervolcanos are more misleading than helpful due to the different aerosols released, the likely air burst fuzing height of nuclear weapons and the globally scattered location of these potential nuclear detonations all being in contrast to the singular and subterranean nature of a supervolcanic eruption.[18] Moreover assuming the entire world stockpile of weapons were grouped together, it would be difficult due to the nuclear fratricide effect, to ensure the individual weapons would go off all at once. Nonetheless, many people believe that a full-scale nuclear war would result, through the nuclear winter effect, in the extinction of the human species, though not all analysts agree on the assumptions inputted into these nuclear winter models.[19]